The Tuscaloosa City Council met on September 30, 2025, at approximately 8:00 PM CT to consider several agenda items, including a proposed vape tax, district fund disbursements, a firefighter grant, and a major proposal to create a Department of Public Safety. The meeting featured extensive debate on the public safety proposal, which was ultimately tabled for 30 days.
Aye, okay. Minutes are adopted. Item number one under old business, Miss Standard, authorizing an ordinance amending chapter seven of the code of Tuscaloosa. This would be better known as the vape tax. Yes, sir. Um this is so we asked for this in conjunction with the 2026 fiscal year budget. Um this is a new form of taxation on what they call consumerable vapor products. Um this last uh legislative session, the state of Alabama through House Bill 529 created what they call a tax an excise tax on consumer consumable vapor products that are sold at wholesale within the state. Their taxation uh rate is at 10 cents per milliliter, and then also within that same state act, they allow any um municipality to also mirror their uh law setup, their taxation setup. You can either do one of two things, um, a part of the state's uh revenue that they collect via this excise tax will be set aside for um distribution to municipalities that do opt in by uh population distribution, same thing kind of like as SSUT that we've been talking about, or you can set up your own program. Um we are proposing to set up our own program instead of operating in the state's program, um, just because who knows what's going to happen with this type of product into the future, if this would be possibly a more lucrative area for the city of Tuscaloosa specifically to operate in. Um we are just mirroring the exact setup that the state has, and then we have to adopt this by tonight in order for it to be able to continue on into the future. Um this is the deadline, otherwise we have to operate in the state's vein. Okay, so I'm I'm not clear on why we would do something separate from the state. If if the ours is gonna mirror what the state says, what's the what's the advantage and what's involved in us setting up the administration of our own? So the revenue would come to us only. Um so this the states when the state taxes the vapor product, it'll be a 10 cents per milliliter. 50 percent will go to the state's general fund, 25 percent will go to counties, 25% will go to municipalities. No, each bucket will be distributed by population, and so we can now create our own at 10 cents per milliliter, and it all comes directly to us. Okay, members, questions, comments? How much non-members can I ask a crazy question? I I know what vaping is, I've seen it, dealt with it in the family, but 10 milliliters. Talk to me a little bit about if I go in and buy vape. Is that like a typical vape? You are asking the wrong person. I have never seen a vape product beside somebody in a car beside me. I have no idea how much 10 how much a milliliter is. Do we I mean what kind of revenue are we talking about from vape? Currently, from what from current, so also within the same exact state act that was passed via the legislature, a lot of products were were considered now illegal. So a lot of products had to be taken off the shelves. Um, and so this is gonna apply to a much smaller population of types of products since the rest are going to be considered illegal. Um and so really the revenue off of this currently will be negligible. We didn't even budget it in the upcoming fiscal year budget. This is really just kind of creating a program just in case it were to become something different down the line. Okay. I if we got more if we got more than five figures, like if we got more than 10,000 dollars, I'd be surprised. Okay. Okay, sorry, got a motion question. There who's we got a motion. I'll make a motion. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Vape tax is forwarded to council. Stump tax doctors. New business. Uh Councilman Phail, approval of disbursement from District 6. Funds for Bryant High School Girls Athletics, two grade.